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Thoughts and reflections on teaching and learning – Cohort 21 Member Blog

3 Resources I’ve Loved This Week…

This week has been an interesting one – with the long weekend it’s the back half of two short weeks in a row. What impact has this had on you? For me, it has pressurized my wellbeing, in that work continues to expand throughout the day. I count myself very fortunate in that my work, my day-to-day fills me up; but that being said, I was drained come Friday evening.

I have worked with both Dan and Greg in different ways. With Dan Prontefract, we

first met during the inaugural year of the CAIS Project 2051 – which has evolved now into the Strategic Change Accelerator. He brings with him a world of experience in what distance does to business and relationships. With Dr. Greg Wells, I have read and reviewed his books “The Ripple Effect” and “The Focus Effect” In this conversation, they explore their personal pivots and pivots that business can and should make to serve the greater purpose.

In particular, Dan speaks of three main purposes:
* Personal Purpose: who am I, what do I believe in, and how do I want to be knownwhen I leave a room
* Organizational Purpose: why are we here, what are we doing to help society, how are we contributing, and how can we enact ‘long-termism” (or as Simon Sinek says, “playing the Infinite Game”* Role Purpose: known what we are doing, how we are adding value at our place of work.

If we don’t take care of these roles, and showing them how they have something to contribute to the organization purpose, and how this might fee their personal purpose, then we lose the opportunity to pivot our work to a greater purpose.

2) Future Resilience #10 – Story-Telling

This article, which I read off of Medium, is a powerful reminder of the ‘narrative’. The narrative that we tell ourselves, and the narratives that we weave into the lives of others.

Stories are the metaphorical hug of connection and relationship. It’s the way we see our place in the world and our place in the world of others. To tell our stories is to help others see how they might connect with us.

What is the story that you are telling yourself? How is it changing? How is the narrative of your school/place of work changing, and how are you supporting the writing and telling of that story?

3) A New Reality: Getting Remote Learning Right

Put out by Educational Leadership, this serves as a highly digestible round up from lead thinkers and practitioners. This is a resource that you can skim through, or read in depth.

A couple of things jumped out at me:

A staple of any online course is discussion, and a good online discussion can be a great way to build community and communication skills.

Teachers who serve students with learning differences are being forced to build new skills in supporting families and students online.

When we transitioned to online learning, it was a stressful time and I didn’t know how I’d handle the volume of work while also managing homeschooling for my two children.

These reminded me that challenges abound, perspective taking is key in times when you are getting overwhelmed, and that it is important to understand that even as we become more practiced in the emergency learning planning, there are still many unknowns to navigate, complexities unfolding all around us, but also a wealth of resources and ‘tribes’ to get us through.